Approximately 51 municipalities across Ontario were impacted by a glitch in the online voting system they had selected for the 2018 municipal elections.
As a result of the delay in getting the system fixed, voting was extended to today at 8 p.m. in some municipalities including Huntsville and Lake of Bays.
All affected municipalities were using the same company: Dominion Voting. The company issued a statement yesterday saying the load issue began at approximately 6:00 p.m. and it was determined that a Toronto-based co-location Internet provider placed an “unauthorized limit on the incoming voting traffic that was roughly 1/10th of the system’s designated bandwidth.”
It said the 90-minute slowdown caused voters to time-out or experience slow response time, which is why some municipalities chose to extend voting by a day.
“We want to assure Ontario voters that we will work to ensure that this problem does not occur in future elections,” stated the company in its release.
As of this morning, voter turnout in Huntsville was at 32.60 per cent and in the Township of Lake of Bays it was sitting at 36.04 per cent with 51 electors voting overnight and more anticipated today before the polls close at 8 p.m.
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Henk Rietveld says
Totally unacceptable!! This day and age? Come on! Any vendor worth their salt should have anticipated this long before it happened. Lowest bid?? It should have gone way more smoothly.
I sure hope that there are penalties associated with poor delivery of the product!
Terry McCaffery says
Could not agree with you more Mr. Rietveld! Dominion Voting should have anticipated that there would be a high voter volume on the designated voting day, October 22!
William Brown says
We tried to vote day one (Oct 12th) and again Oct 15th at both Huntsville and Lake of Bay sites, In each case the website was not accessible. A call to Huntsville help line was not helpful. Only after repeated tries ,did we manage to vote. We used two different computers and 3 different browsers. This problem was from the beginning; not on the last day of voting as alleged by Dominion Voting. Is this a legitimate election??
Peggy Peterson says
Yes there are some serious issues that need our attention and the lack of privacy in the voting process was a clear concern and has been reported to the Privacy Commission. If anyone wants to document the issues they experienced it will help us ensure that this never happens in Huntsville again. The concern is that no one can ensure the entire system was not hacked … The entire justification of this voting method was justified by the concept that more people would vote and we would save money but there were 11 % fewer votes counted and I have filed an FOI to get all the costs including the staff costs before and during the 11 days of voting . I do not think we saved any money and it sure made some people very frustrated and angry.
Bill Beatty says
Twice in 3 elections……Garbage ……Please , no more !
Rob Millman says
My understanding is that (in addition to trying to save money and increase voter turnout); it has become increasingly difficult to recruit volunteer voting officials.
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In my humble opinion, we should simply return to one day of voting; with paper ballots. There should be a phone number and an e-mail address for those who are without vehicles, or who have accessibility issues. A shuttle bus and one of the accessible buses should be made available to take these individuals to and from the nearest polling station. If insufficient voting officers is a problem, reduce the amount of polls. For absolute shut-ins, an officer could be dispatched to take his/her votes.
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In any case, I feel that it is possible to find sufficient volunteers to fill all positions; especially now that Dominion has failed us in consecutive elections.
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Two benefits would surely be derived: a cost savings, and the possibility of recounts for close votes. In addition, I feel that we would have a happier voting public, and consequently, a larger turnout. Everything shiny and new isn’t better, simply by virtue of being shiny and new.
Erin Jones says
I agree, Peggy, that the security of the vote is extremely important. I never particularly liked the idea of voting over the internet for that reason–but I assumed that the security issues had been addressed. That it didn’t result in more people voting seems to void the reason for doing it in the first place. I don’t like that there is no paper trail either. Municipal elections tend not to be very close but what of the case where a recount is necessary? There is also the problem of corruption–how can we be sure that the electronic voting data has not been altered by other parties through sophisticated manipulation?
The old system was not broken–Canada is known around the world for a free and fair elections process. Whose idea was it to tamper with it and toward what end? If it was an experiment, I’d say it was a flop. Even though I found it convenient and easy (I voted on the first day) these other questions should plague us.